by Rachel (unedited)
I split up from my violent hubby on the 29th of November 2008, and had to stop the old Joint claim, and make a claim as a single mother. I put the claim in on the 1st December as soon as their office opened, and was told on the phone by the advisor that it would only take 2 weeks to process my claim. I thought great i need the money as xmas was a mere 3 weeks away, 2 weeks went by and not a word, i phoned the helpline and was told the computer was refusing to accept my single claim as it kept coming back as a joint claim.
I was told to stay in touch and check progress, they were in no rush to sort it out either, meanwhile xmas was upon me and i was surviving on £86 a week to feed me plus six children, and put electric on the meter key. I kept phoning HMRC’s helpline but got absolutely nowhere, they just didn’t care, and were in no rush to sort it out, even though myself and six children were relying upon them.
I waited and waited and waited, i had to eventually involve Mr David Laws MP, as my attempts to get answers fell on deaf ears, HMRC have this knack of avoiding answering your questions proclaiming not to know the answer you seek, and when you ask to talk to the manager they wont let you, its frustrating how the bosses never come to the phone to answer you isn’t it?
I waited 7 very long arduous weeks surviving on very little money, stress levels were beyond a joke, i made phone calls to the Tax Credit helpline about 5 times a week, and wrote to David Laws twice about this matter.
The laughable thing in this though is how HMRC found time to send me a letter of demand for an overpayment that occured on the old joint claim for £400 within a week of my split, but failed to process my new single parent application for 7 weeks.
I was panicked and afraid of how me and the kids could possibly survive, stressed out to the max, on anti depressants, and sleeping pills, though the extreme pressure i was under keeping my family afloat.I felt ill constantly from lack of sleep, and dreaded getting up in the morning. Im 32 and greyer haired than most 70 year olds because of the weight of stress put upon me by HMRC Tax Credits.
HMRC’s incompetence and extremely slow services put me and my kids through a kind of hell. The way they put getting their overpayment money over processing my claim was disgusting.
I advise anyone going through this to buckle down the hatches your in for a long bumpy ride...
www.TaxCC.org
Friday 30 January 2009
Monday 26 January 2009
Warning: The Devil's No Better!
(Even If You Know Him)
by Paula Dean
It’s not particularly Tax Credit related but a couple of my encounters this week do seem to illustrate very well how this farce was caused in the first place and how the rampant injustice continues unabated.
They do say; ‘anyone who wants to be in power, shouldn’t be’, and I’m not going to name any names. All I can say is, MP’s ..... who’d have 'em?
I wrote to mine this week regarding a non Tax Credit issue. No, I’m not one of them who camps out in their MP’s surgery with a list of issues to raise. My MP isn’t even involved in my Tax Credit dispute. (I can’t be bothered to continue the fight this would entail). Anyway, I emailed him a standardised missive from the TheyWorkForYou website asking him to vote NO to the cop-out from the Freedom of Information Act that the Whitehall lot were just about to fix for themselves regarding their expenses. I was polite, non-aggressive and impersonal, despite previous run-in's with the man.
I got back a vitriolic attack on the two other leading Parties, including comments that I’m pretty sure are libellous amongst other things. I’ve written back to complain. (The vote got scrapped as being too embarrassing anyway!).
Two days later, I ran in to his fellow party member and MP for the other half of this borough. Tax Credit Casualties were nominated in the local community achievement awards, and the hosts (Voluntary Action Rotherham) invited me to a celebration that was to be attended by royalty. I’m not known for being a fan of this particular family, but VAR had asked nominees to attend to reflect the diversity of our local voluntary community, and seeing as I got a lovely trophy and a slap up meal out of the awards do, plus lots of help from VAR over the years, I couldn’t really say no.
Lots of standing around in formation ensued while Prince Andrew was shown round. The fact he talked to everyone individually earned him lots of praise and I resolved to remain polite and helpful because it was obvious I would upset lots of people if I was even perceived to be disrespectful. He was alright to me for the few minutes we chatted (compulsory); he didn’t quite get what TCC did, but knew of overpayments, and complimented us that “it must be hard to understand tax law as it doesn’t appear to be written in English”. He reckons my dyslexia puts me at an advantage on this, which drew a round of laughs. When he’d done his thing and left, the attendees were all to ‘mingle’. This other MP was present. Please note he has previously held a ministerial role in the treasury, as such I have made contact with him on a number of occasions re TCC, but it appears that he is too frequently chased around local events by purpled haired ‘Goth’ women to be able to know which ones which.
He didn’t recognise me as a Tax Credit casualty and failed massively to read my polite but obvious body language (step stepping his approaches, turning away from him etc.) and ended up pinning me in a crowd to do small talk about the award I’d won that had earned me the invite. Pennies visibly dropped when I said our name, and to cut a long story short he tried to be brave and asked me if I had seen any improvement in Tax Credit overpayment cases, and asked me what I would suggest. I said ‘patch measures aren’t suitable, I would scrap the system ....’ at which point he interrupted me saying something dismissive and turned his back on me. Well! I told him not to dismiss people when he had just asked them a question. To which he said he wasn’t going to talk to me if I’m going to make unworkable comments. I made comments about his bad attitude and left.
I swear one day I will 'do time' for one of these guys, I really will. These are the guys supposedly working for the towns people benefit. We are continually expected to perform to a professional standard when communicating with them, (i.e. reachable during office hours, access to the same information as them etc.), despite being unfunded, voluntary, working after work hours and being mere mortals without the resources, staffing and power they have. Yet all the local contingent of TCC ever gets from them is rolled eyes, impatience, rudeness and outright inappropriate behaviour (a previous escapade which I won’t go into).
With behaviour like this allowed to continue unabated surely the role of MPs has to be questioned. They are supposed to be our democratic representatives in the parliamentary process, yet it’s quite obvious personal prejudices and political allegiances hinder them performing this in a fully balanced manner.
Wanna see what they spend our money on? They’d rather rewrite the law so you can’t. Wanna answer a question they are asked; ‘I can’t hear you, la la la la ...’
One more chink in my ‘I believe in justice’ armour!
www.TaxCC.org
by Paula Dean
It’s not particularly Tax Credit related but a couple of my encounters this week do seem to illustrate very well how this farce was caused in the first place and how the rampant injustice continues unabated.
They do say; ‘anyone who wants to be in power, shouldn’t be’, and I’m not going to name any names. All I can say is, MP’s ..... who’d have 'em?
I wrote to mine this week regarding a non Tax Credit issue. No, I’m not one of them who camps out in their MP’s surgery with a list of issues to raise. My MP isn’t even involved in my Tax Credit dispute. (I can’t be bothered to continue the fight this would entail). Anyway, I emailed him a standardised missive from the TheyWorkForYou website asking him to vote NO to the cop-out from the Freedom of Information Act that the Whitehall lot were just about to fix for themselves regarding their expenses. I was polite, non-aggressive and impersonal, despite previous run-in's with the man.
I got back a vitriolic attack on the two other leading Parties, including comments that I’m pretty sure are libellous amongst other things. I’ve written back to complain. (The vote got scrapped as being too embarrassing anyway!).
Two days later, I ran in to his fellow party member and MP for the other half of this borough. Tax Credit Casualties were nominated in the local community achievement awards, and the hosts (Voluntary Action Rotherham) invited me to a celebration that was to be attended by royalty. I’m not known for being a fan of this particular family, but VAR had asked nominees to attend to reflect the diversity of our local voluntary community, and seeing as I got a lovely trophy and a slap up meal out of the awards do, plus lots of help from VAR over the years, I couldn’t really say no.
Lots of standing around in formation ensued while Prince Andrew was shown round. The fact he talked to everyone individually earned him lots of praise and I resolved to remain polite and helpful because it was obvious I would upset lots of people if I was even perceived to be disrespectful. He was alright to me for the few minutes we chatted (compulsory); he didn’t quite get what TCC did, but knew of overpayments, and complimented us that “it must be hard to understand tax law as it doesn’t appear to be written in English”. He reckons my dyslexia puts me at an advantage on this, which drew a round of laughs. When he’d done his thing and left, the attendees were all to ‘mingle’. This other MP was present. Please note he has previously held a ministerial role in the treasury, as such I have made contact with him on a number of occasions re TCC, but it appears that he is too frequently chased around local events by purpled haired ‘Goth’ women to be able to know which ones which.
He didn’t recognise me as a Tax Credit casualty and failed massively to read my polite but obvious body language (step stepping his approaches, turning away from him etc.) and ended up pinning me in a crowd to do small talk about the award I’d won that had earned me the invite. Pennies visibly dropped when I said our name, and to cut a long story short he tried to be brave and asked me if I had seen any improvement in Tax Credit overpayment cases, and asked me what I would suggest. I said ‘patch measures aren’t suitable, I would scrap the system ....’ at which point he interrupted me saying something dismissive and turned his back on me. Well! I told him not to dismiss people when he had just asked them a question. To which he said he wasn’t going to talk to me if I’m going to make unworkable comments. I made comments about his bad attitude and left.
I swear one day I will 'do time' for one of these guys, I really will. These are the guys supposedly working for the towns people benefit. We are continually expected to perform to a professional standard when communicating with them, (i.e. reachable during office hours, access to the same information as them etc.), despite being unfunded, voluntary, working after work hours and being mere mortals without the resources, staffing and power they have. Yet all the local contingent of TCC ever gets from them is rolled eyes, impatience, rudeness and outright inappropriate behaviour (a previous escapade which I won’t go into).
With behaviour like this allowed to continue unabated surely the role of MPs has to be questioned. They are supposed to be our democratic representatives in the parliamentary process, yet it’s quite obvious personal prejudices and political allegiances hinder them performing this in a fully balanced manner.
Wanna see what they spend our money on? They’d rather rewrite the law so you can’t. Wanna answer a question they are asked; ‘I can’t hear you, la la la la ...’
One more chink in my ‘I believe in justice’ armour!
www.TaxCC.org
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